RANDALL BEACH: Competitive lockpicker opens up to Connecticut crowd

"It was a yellow band padlock," he said with a sentimental satisfied smile. "I was 22. This was in 2006."

"When the plug rotated, it went 'zunk'! It was this great auditory moment."

"I picked another and another and then I started teaching other people."

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Towne had come to New Haven's Institute Library on a recent evening as the latest guest of the library's entertaining "Amateur Hour" series. Several dozen people watched with great interest as he showed us his picking skills, all the while discussing his hobby with great enthusiasm.

Towne had been introduced to us as a competitive lockpicker and a pioneer of the American Locksport Movement.

This young man is a founding board member of the Open Organization of Lockpickers, U.S. Chapter. In 2007 he launched Non-Destructive Entry magazine.

That "non-destructive" part is important for the public to realize. Towne said he has never met a criminal in "the community" of lockpickers.

"I could give you anecdote after anecdote about people in the community who are approached to do bad things," he told us.

They won't do it. They use their powers for the forces of good, not evil.

Indeed, the writer Joshua Foer, who was interviewing Towne as he sat beside him at the library event, seemed a little worried when he asked: "You could break into my house?"

"Yeah, I could break into your house," Towne replied nonchalantly. "Unless you have extremely high-quality locks."

"I had to steal my own car once," he added. "I couldn't find my key and they were doing street cleaning."

Almost as soon as Towne sat down to begin his presentation, a lady in the audience walked up and handed him a U-Haul lock; she had lost the key and needed his help.

"I'll pick a little," he said, going to work. He had pulled out a case loaded with implements such as tweezers. "Some of these are of my own design," he announced. Others were by fellow members of "the community," including a character who goes by the name "Toolie McGee."

Towne can talk and pick at the same time, although it slows him down somewhat in his quest.

"Tension is very important when you're picking a lock," he told us. "The goal is aligning the pins by applying light pressure. If you apply heavy tension, you're just pushing past the imperfections of the pins."

Another picker once told Towne that the proper amount of tension is "the weight of three butterflies on the end of the wrench." Towne noted the tension must also be variable: more when needed, less when needed.

After picking for a few minutes, he muttered, "I'm not getting much feedback." But a moment later, he said softly, "Oh! Open!"

The crowd applauded as he returned the open lock to the grateful lady.

Towne has participated in international lockpicking competitions and he is in awe of some of the pickers he has encountered. "I went head-to-head with the world's greatest lockpicker, a German dentist, Dr. Manfred Bolker. He took me to school!"

Recalling how he was vanquished by the fabled dentist, Towne said, "His picking style is patient, observant and methodical."

While fielding questions from the audience, Towne was asked about depictions of lockpicking in movies. "It fascinates me how bad it is," he replied. It makes me want to vomit!"

Towne had to stop watching "Dexter," the Showtime TV series about a blood spatter pattern analyst who moonlights as a serial killer. "He makes me so angry! He's supposed to be this master lockpicker!"

You would think Towne could make a living from something about which he is so knowledgable and passionate. But he is a barista at a Barnes & Noble Cafe in Burlington, Vt., his hometown. "Making fancy coffee drinks for nice people is a pretty all right gig," he said.

At one time he developed his own line of tools but he ran into production problems.

In an email from his home, he said, "What I would love more than anything is not to pick for money or develop picks for money but to go to grad school and spent several years completely engrossed in the study of the social structures of security and the history of the technology of security."

Towne said this would be "a dream come true: to completely immerse myself in the anthropology of physical security."